Evangelical Christianity and Politics in the Oromo Context in Ethiopia

Wake Jeo Gerbi, an Oromo theologian and intellectual, exposes the crimes that the Abyssinian rulers and their supporters have been committing on the Oromo nation and other colonized nations. He brilliantly proposes strategies for Christian Oromos to join with their Waqqeffannaa and Muslim brothers and sisters to struggle and break the yoke of Ethiopian colonialism and to enjoy religious and political freedom in Oromia. Following the footsteps of Reverend Gudina Tumsa of Oromia, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King of Black America and Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Gerbi forcefully argues that, like other colonized peoples, the Oromo of all religious backgrounds should develop Oromummaa in order to unite against their tormentors to fulfill their religious missions of liberation and social justice. Asafa Jalata, PhD, Professor of Sociology and Global and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee,Knoxville,USA Wake Jeo Gerbi is an Oromo theologian and intellectual who was born in 1980 in Wallaga, Ethiopia. He is a preacher who has been actively involved in the Oromo people’s struggle for freedom starting from his early school age. He received his MA in Theology and MA in Religion, Society and Global Issues from the Norwegian School of Theology. Currently, he is studying Intercontextual Theology while taking courses from other academic areas like Law and Philosophy at the University of Oslo. Gerbi has written different articles and presented several papers at different conferences. He was a part-time teacher of theology at Mekane Yesus Seminary in Music Department in 2008 and at Oslo International Bible College in 2012. Gerbi lives in Norway.